A Study On The Application Of Reading Circles In Senior High School English Reading Teaching

Reading,as a comprehension skill,is regarded as one of the main input forms in English learning and also operates a major part in English teaching in senior high school.In order to instruct students to extract necessary information,construct meanings,and acquire reading skills and reading strategies effectively,lots of reading teaching models have been invented and practiced again and again.Among them,reading circles teaching model has attracted more and more attention in recent years.Reading circles was brought in from abroad.As a new reading teaching model,it has been extensively applied both in L1 classroom and taking English as second or foreign language classroom.It devotes to forming small,peer-led discussion groups.Members within groups undertake different circle roles.They firstly finish their own role sheets through individual reading,discuss with group members,and share their discussion results in the front of the class and finally are evaluated by the teacher and peers from other groups.Reading circles advocates taking students as the center,encouraging them to think positively from multiple perspectives,and boldly putting forward their own unique opinions or ideas.Therefore,under the guidance of Lev Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory and Louise Rosenblatt’s reader response theory,this study tried to apply reading circles teaching model to senior high school English reading teaching classroom.96 students from two parallel classes in senior 1 of Jiayuguan No.1 Middle School were selected as the research participants.Examination papers and questionnaire were used as the research instruments.Seven reading passages from New Senior English for China Student’s Book 1 and 2published by People’s Education Press were taken as reading materials,which were instructed by two different reading teaching models in experimental class and control class.Reading circles was applied to experimental class;interactive teaching to control class.After a semester of teaching experiment,the author explored whether reading circles model could improve students’ English reading comprehension ability and cooperative learning ability.Data before and after the experiment were collected and analyzed by SPSS22.0.Based on the analysis of data collected,the following conclusions could be drawn.Firstly,students’ overall English reading comprehension ability could be enhanced.Among students with different English proficiency levels,high-level and middle-level students’ English reading comprehension ability was improved the most obviously.Some possible reasons were as follows.Reading circle roles required students to not only focus on the linguistic knowledge of the text,but collect relevant cultural information,summarize what they have read,and connect with their previous experiences or knowledge to analyze and appreciate.Those were just consistent with the concrete content of English reading comprehension ability.For students with high and middle English proficiency levels,they were capable of not only finishing their individual circle roles independently,but ready to help members with low English proficiency level and also played an important role of transition and leading in the whole discussion and sharing sessions of the reading circles,therefore,their English reading comprehension ability was raised more rapidly.Secondly,students’ overall cooperative learning ability could be strengthened.Among students with different English proficiency levels,high-level and middle-level students’ cooperative learning ability was raised greatly.Some possible reasons were as follows.Procedures of doing the reading circles endowed students with cooperation norms,cooperation skills and strategies,cooperation consciousness and cooperation habit.Those four key aspects were also consistent with the core of cooperative learning ability.High-level and middle-level students’ English reading comprehension ability was gradually improved during experiencing seven rounds of reading circles,which would in turn further promote their development of cooperative learning ability.They were more confident and courageous to participate in cooperation and interaction,therefore,their cooperative learning ability was improved the most obviously.Through the aforementioned experimental conclusions,relevant English reading teaching implications were as follows.Firstly,reading circles was conductive to developing students’ English reading comprehension ability and cooperative learning ability.Also,it had varying degrees of influence on students with different English proficiency levels.Therefore,teachers should think about how to make students with different English proficiency levels benefit more from reading circles model in the future classroom.Besides,when applying reading circles model to senior high school English reading teaching classroom,teachers should learn the concept,essence and teaching procedures of reading circles in advance,making clear their own roles and responsibilities so as to ensure that reading circles was carried out effectively in the classroom.Lastly,reading circles model advocated that students should be divided into groups.Also,the grouping standards and the number of students within groups should be formulated according to the specific conditions so as to promote cooperation among group members and stimulate students’ reading enthusiasm.To sum up,this teaching experiment has proved the feasibility and effectiveness of applying reading circles model to senior high school English reading teaching classroom.It can not only improve students’ English reading comprehension ability and cooperative learning ability,but also emphasize students’ center position and interaction among peers,which bring new life and vitality to English reading classroom and provide some references for the effective development of English reading teaching in senior high school.